Latest Gear Live Videos

We’re not going to lie. We’re in the comfort of a Bellagio suite with a 12 mbps down pipe, watching the Gates keynote stream on a pretty massive TV. And we’re liveblogging it. Some very cool things coming up, including Avalon applications, Xbox IPTV “channels” and hot, Bill Gates action. Stay tuned, refresh a lot, and have fun.

[6:48pm] We’re being welcomed to the social with a cool Vista-esque video showing off some of the new things we’ve seen this year.

[6:51pm] “Over 40% of US homes now have multiple computers.” Clearly, a large amount of credit due directly to Gates for this.

[6:52pm] He’s talking about the incredible increase in bandwidth, capabilities, high definition and all the fun we’re seeing lately. “The graphics revolution is letting us think about representing reality on the screen.”

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One of Vista’s new features, in addition to superior power and boot management for notebooks, is the SideShow add-on. Asus’ W5Fe is the first to include the technology: An externally visible, cover-mounted display that sits quietly, looking forlorn while displaying information to you “at a glance” and asking you why you don’t just open it up and use the computer proper. (“Battery and convenience,” you say, trying to comfort it.) “I feel like you’re taking me for granted; toiling all day to provide you with occasional weather and email updates, on a tiny screen that should make you smile, but only makes you wax quizzical, curious and questioning how you ever let the salesman talk you into this upgrade.”

“We’ve had this discussion before, SideShow. I appreciate that I can play simple games and check RSS feeds and emails from you. I just wish that you would do something truly useful, like send this data to my cell phone.”

Fortunately, the SideShow platform allows for such possibilities, but until someone makes use of it, having an external display for something like this just seems silly, and the Asus W5Fe probably knows it.

A few people have asked for it, so we figured we would deliver. We put out a lot of posts in 2006 here at Gear Live, and we want to shine a light on those that rose to the top of the pack. These are the most read stories on Gear Live in 2006, figuring in our entire back catalogue of posts:

Here you go guys, the full, entire video that was sent to us by “Loki” - the Enigma Director - as part of Microsoft’s Vanishing Point game. Give it a watch, and see if you can pick out any clues that we may be missing. So far, we have shown you what Loki sent us - the Vista Media Center computer, and laid out all the Vanishing Point clues that we have so far in video. All that’s left for you to do is continue brainstorming, and continue watching for clues. Who knows, maybe you’ll win.

Okay guys, something is definitely up at Microsoft as far as it pertains to the launch of Windows Vista. It looks like they are putting quite a bit of their marketing budget behind a very “outside the box” way of spreading the buzz - and we aren’t talking about full-page spreads in PC Magazine. Earlier today, DHL dropped off a ridiculously large box at the Gear Live headquarters in Seattle, WA. We opened it up, and found a brand new, Windows Vista-based Media Center PC. This particular one is made by Velocity Micro, and it’s loaded to the max.

Now, normally, this is nothing out of the ordinary, as we tend to get a multitude of deliveries each and every week that we review, unbox, and give our overall impressions on - but this was different, as a fairly cryptic note was included in the box that read:

This one is from our friends over at Krunker, who decided to go through the horrific pain and agony (in our opinion) of downloading the huge video files available on the Xbox 360 Video Marketplace onto the miniscule Xbox 360 hard drive. They report back with their full review of the service, which they see as one of the beginnings of an Xbox 360 - Zune relationship:

The new Xbox Video Marketplace is a small step in the right direction for the Xbox 360. The initial release is underwhelming and some of the restrictions annoying, but the service introduction clearly lays out the infrastructure and ground work for a bigger service down the road - one that will most likely bridge us to the Zune as well.

A small step in the right direction - we agree there - but come on Microsoft. You guys created Windows Media Video, and it streams incredibly well on PCs. Why can’t you use the same technology on the Xbox 360? Don’t you think users would much rather have instant-on access to these shows and movies rather than having to wait hours for a download to complete? Contemplate that, please, and get back to us. Thanks.

I’ve had the RTM version of Windows Vista on my Toshiba Tecra M4 for about a week now. Strangely, I’m having issues with the machine that didn’t happen in RC2. I think it’s all traceable to the nVidia video driver, which was updated through Windows Update right after the install completed. I’m getting massive video corruption coming out of sleep mode (making the machine unusable), to the point where I now have to hibernate the machine instead of sleep.

I can’t exactly fault Microsoft for this, except that the driver came through Windows Update, so it should have been checked for issues like this before it was released. Hopefully this can be sorted out before the widespread release in January.

When Microsoft first let us know what Project Longhorn was all about, it truly did look like it would revolutionize the way we use PCs. Check out the video above which shows the evolution of Windows, and how Vista was supposed to launch in October of 2003 with an amazing new UI. Makes you realize all the things Microsoft truly had to eliminate from the Vista operating system in order to ship it - albeit over three years late.